It's even more radical to think that this article is a transcript of a teaching session he gave in 1970. As someone who spent 20 years in the music industry, and a significant portion of that in the Christian industry, it's interesting to see the whole panorama of this now in 2024. Christian music, I believe, had a creative peak from the late 70's until the mid 90's. For a brief moment we saw the uptick in Christian creativity infiltrate church culture to some degree, but it was largely based on geographic region, with the highest concentration on the west coast, followed by maybe Nashville that saw a large influx of ex-Californians migrate there (of which my family was a part of). Since then, there's been a very steady shift into the more attractional church model that promotes homogeny in sound and style to combat the very issues Sproul brings up here. In the modern church view, songs must be simplistic enough for congregants to sing and understand and easy enough for musicians of varying skill levels to play. While on paper this seems like there's a lot of validity to this approach, its fundamentally devoid of any elevated vision of what Christ calls us to. It becomes more about a spiritual encounter and leans much more heavily on "emotional experiences" than it should.
Hard work looks different at every level, I've been working in full time vocational ministry for over 10 years now, slowly trying to lead music teams in a different direction that focuses more on cultivating creativity within the church body that looks more like an authentic expression of the local church we're a part of rather than what the "captial C" church does. That's hard work. For our band leaders, their hard work is to grow in their giftings as writers, arrangers, and liturgy formers as well as grow in their ability to lead their band. For our musicians, their hard work is to grow in their abilities as players and maybe even work on expanding thier own personal musical preferences along the way.
Whats brilliant about all this hard work is it exposes heart issues along the way for all of us that further drives us all towards Christ and our absolute dependency on Him. This is our paramount work as Christians, and certainly other areas like marriage, parenting, and our unique secular contexts also work towards this goal, but our lives would be sorely devoid of this unique context of spiritual growth if we didn't foster a culture within our church that values the hard work we are called to accomplish on all fronts of our lives.
I hope your "hard work" becomes fully realized for the glory of God, but mostly I hope all of our hard work is discovered by those who also have a radically impacted heart for a return to Christian excellence, and can be used collectively to help shape future generations more into the image of Christ Jesus, fully displaying His glory on a lamp stand that once again invites those far from God into a family that values the fostering of creativity God has stewarded to all of us as an act of worship.
Wow, so many things to consider as a result of this thought-provoking article. Thanks, Sam, for inspiring me once again to reflect on the deep things that matter.
Thanks for reading, Cyd! Did you get a chance to read Sproul's essay? I liked it so much that I printed it out, made notes all over it, and put it in a binder. 😅
It's even more radical to think that this article is a transcript of a teaching session he gave in 1970. As someone who spent 20 years in the music industry, and a significant portion of that in the Christian industry, it's interesting to see the whole panorama of this now in 2024. Christian music, I believe, had a creative peak from the late 70's until the mid 90's. For a brief moment we saw the uptick in Christian creativity infiltrate church culture to some degree, but it was largely based on geographic region, with the highest concentration on the west coast, followed by maybe Nashville that saw a large influx of ex-Californians migrate there (of which my family was a part of). Since then, there's been a very steady shift into the more attractional church model that promotes homogeny in sound and style to combat the very issues Sproul brings up here. In the modern church view, songs must be simplistic enough for congregants to sing and understand and easy enough for musicians of varying skill levels to play. While on paper this seems like there's a lot of validity to this approach, its fundamentally devoid of any elevated vision of what Christ calls us to. It becomes more about a spiritual encounter and leans much more heavily on "emotional experiences" than it should.
Hard work looks different at every level, I've been working in full time vocational ministry for over 10 years now, slowly trying to lead music teams in a different direction that focuses more on cultivating creativity within the church body that looks more like an authentic expression of the local church we're a part of rather than what the "captial C" church does. That's hard work. For our band leaders, their hard work is to grow in their giftings as writers, arrangers, and liturgy formers as well as grow in their ability to lead their band. For our musicians, their hard work is to grow in their abilities as players and maybe even work on expanding thier own personal musical preferences along the way.
Whats brilliant about all this hard work is it exposes heart issues along the way for all of us that further drives us all towards Christ and our absolute dependency on Him. This is our paramount work as Christians, and certainly other areas like marriage, parenting, and our unique secular contexts also work towards this goal, but our lives would be sorely devoid of this unique context of spiritual growth if we didn't foster a culture within our church that values the hard work we are called to accomplish on all fronts of our lives.
I hope your "hard work" becomes fully realized for the glory of God, but mostly I hope all of our hard work is discovered by those who also have a radically impacted heart for a return to Christian excellence, and can be used collectively to help shape future generations more into the image of Christ Jesus, fully displaying His glory on a lamp stand that once again invites those far from God into a family that values the fostering of creativity God has stewarded to all of us as an act of worship.
Wow, so many things to consider as a result of this thought-provoking article. Thanks, Sam, for inspiring me once again to reflect on the deep things that matter.
Thanks for reading, Cyd! Did you get a chance to read Sproul's essay? I liked it so much that I printed it out, made notes all over it, and put it in a binder. 😅
I haven't read it yet, but thanks to you for putting it on my radar :)